Leonard Nimoy Was Promised Spock Could Have an Operation If He Hated the Ears

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Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock in 'Star Trek'.

Tuesday marks three years since the beloved actor's death.

It turns out that when Star Trek got off the ground in 1966, Leonard Nimoy was not a fan of Spock's iconic ears.

In fact, he was so unhappy at first that he was promised that after a number of episodes, the character could undergo an operation to remove the points.

In a 1976 audio interview unearthed by Heat Vision on Tuesday — which marks three years since the actor's passing — Nimoy explained that the first set of Spock ears were a mess and a sticking point between himself and show creator Gene Roddenberry.

"In the early stages of developing the makeup, before we shot the first pilot, we were with the wrong makeup people," Nimoy said in the old interview. "And they were making the ears for me, experimentally at first, and they really looked grotesque. And we went through three or four of those sessions. As time got closer to the first day of shooting ... I became more and more concerned about the look."

Going back and forth with Roddenberry, who insisted on the ears, Nimoy was told an operation would be written into the the show if the ears continued to be an issue.

"And finally, it was Fred Phillips, who was in charge of the makeup on the series, who knew what was wrong," Nimoy explained. "The problem was the studio had already made a commitment to these other people to make the ears and didn't want him to go elsewhere because it would cost more money. [Phillips] said we must and forced the issue, and got me a good pair of ears to solve the problem.

Nimoy would end up wearing 150 pairs of ears during the three-year run of the series, he said in the 1976 interview. He died Feb. 27, 2015, at the age of 83.